Television, in the twenty-first century, has dismantled and reinvented common cultural perceptions of the American dream. Admittedly, though, the banality of today’s world of 24-hour cable television — where we are inundated with bland sitcoms, reality TV, paid programming and advertisements — has a crippling effect on Americans’ capacity to grapple with political and socioeconomic realities. It is these same realities that inform an accurate understanding of the American dream, and its diminished availability. In the past decade, however, a plethora of culturally significant television series have reinvigorated substantive discussion of the American dream in a way that other artistic mediums, like film, and perhaps even literature, cannot and have not.
“Breaking Bad,” “The Wire” and “House of Cards” are all exemplars of the recent successes in television to challenge traditional and widely held understandings of the American dream — like the idea that if we work hard enough we will achieve material success, security and happiness. Similar to how novels like “The Great Gatsby,” “Bonfire of the Vanities” or “American Psycho” did in the last century, these TV series attempt to realign perceptions of the American dream to better match, and adapt to, the realities of suburban consumerist culture, inner-city America and contemporary politics. Though these shows are fictitious, and sometimes fantastic, they speak profound truths and ask penetrative questions.
“Breaking Bad,” presents extended examination of the hardship of an overqualified, underpaid high school chemistry teacher, Walter White, who is simultaneously expecting a newborn and dying of terminal cancer. He turns to manufacturing crystal meth, and his ensuing transformation and growth provides the thematic backbone for the series. In five stunning seasons of achieving the conventionally understood good life (wealth, purpose and self) through unconventional means (crystal meth manufacture), Walter White has altered our vision of the American dream.
“Breaking Bad” thus demands that we rethink our fundamental understanding of the American dream because of two main paradoxes. The first is how someone engaged in a morally ruinous occupation, who represents the enemy of American society and families, can ultimately achieve some form of self-realization. The second is how, for the rest of us, the everyday banality and routine of consumerism has made self-actualization and growth increasingly distant. The show’s other two principal contributions to public discourse are its continual treatment of the quandary of philosophical conflicts questions surrounding conflicting duties to self, family and wider society and its assertion that the road to riches is paved with deceit and fraught with moral perils (this is evident not only in Walter White but also in supporting characters).
“House of Cards” and its Machiavellian House Majority whip, Frank Underwood, have altered the way we look at politics in the nation’s capital in a more cynical, dark direction. The show taps into but also exacerbates the distrust the American people have with their government in the modern era. “House of Cards,” in a compelling way, defies our notions that lawmakers serve the governed and not themselves. “The Wire,” a crime drama set in Baltimore, offers a critical evaluation of the realities facing urban America that forces us to reconsider and reevaluate our perceptions of the availability of the American dream.
Those three series, as well as many more on television, have addressed themes pertinent to twenty-first century American society more effectively than other forms of media for two principal reasons. First, television generally has a larger audience than other art forms like novels, poems or plays, and thus its messages can reach more people and, by extension, potentially catalyze the greatest amount of discourse. Second, television achieves greater thematic depth, and therefore, intellectual influence, than its popular cousin: the motion picture. A story arc that spans several seasons develops themes to a greater extent than any two-hour film could. Additionally, television characters, who represent certain concepts pertinent to the American dream, resonate with audiences in ways movie protagonists never could, as their stories and personalities are developed over a greater length of time.
Throughout human history, different artistic mediums have emerged and become positioned to communicate ideas about politics and society; today’s age belongs to television. High quality television series provoke debate about the practical realities of this century in ways that older mediums have in the past. America’s artistic anti-hero is no longer F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Gatsby or Francis Ford Coppola’s Don Vito Corleone; indeed, AMC’s Walter White has picked up the mantle left by his nineteenth-century namesake and oracle of American consciousness, Walt Whitman in reshaping our vision of the American dream.
Ben Rudgley is a Viewpoint Writer.
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